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This thesis consists of three essays in political economics. In the first essay "Feigning Politicians,'' I explore a model of politics where politicians have limited ability to influence policy. In this environment, I show that politicians face limited accountability and have an incentive to feign support for policies that voters demand: proposing policies that voters demand but then exerting little effort toward enacting such policies. A key implication of this feigning behavior is that, in some instances, less effective politicians will be reelected with a higher probability than more effective politicians. I provide empirical support for this key implication in U.S. House elections. In the second essay "Gridlock, Leverage, and Policy Bundling," I explore a dynamic model of legislative bargaining where alternatives to the status-quo arrive stochastically during the bargaining process and the proposer can bundle multiple alternatives into a single proposal. Contrary to the prevailing wisdom that policy bundling reduces legislative gridlock, I show that policy bundling can increase gridlock via a leverage incentive; I call gridlock of this form leverage-based gridlock. Leverage-based gridlock is more likely to occur during periods of economic or political stability and, when it occurs, causes traditional measures of legislator ideology to overstate the true level of polarization between legislators. In the final essay "Political Capital," we explore a two-period model of organizational decision making where the leader of the organization has a stock of political capital that she can choose to spend to influence decisions. The leader's stock of political capital evolves dynamically and may increase or decrease depending on the leader's decision to spend her capital and if her decision to spend was correct ex-post. This presents the leader with an intertemporal choice problem: spending political capital today will improve today's decision (in expectation) but may result in less political capital—and hence less ...

AbstractChild poverty, child maltreatment, and child health and development are major public policy issues. By the end of the Great Recession in 2009, as many as one in four children under the age of five were living in poverty and six million children were subject to child maltreatment reports in America. For decades, evidence‐based home visiting (EBHV) programs have provided effective early interventions for preventing child maltreatment and promoting child and family outcomes to pregnant women and families with children age birth to five years old. Despite this, no widespread federal policies or funding supported home visiting before 2010. Through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), the federal government invested $1.5 billion in home visiting with the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) initiative. While many articles examine the effectiveness of home visiting and call attention to the unprecedented features of MIECHV, this article applies the multiple streams framework to illuminate the unique social and political contexts culminating in the inclusion of MIECHV in ACA. The findings in this article are significant for policy analysts, advocates, and program developers and for establishing policies requiring evidence‐based practices.